


one of these nights

by jamesjoyce



Category: RWBY
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 12:52:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6520534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamesjoyce/pseuds/jamesjoyce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After everything, Pyrrha has nightmares. Jaune is there to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	one of these nights

**Author's Note:**

> i understand that this is a little confusing without context so imagine pyrrha is the winter soldier of the rwby world. please work with me. 
> 
> and the title comes from [song of the same name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HZ2ZnvOLmc) which i think fits the tone/mood/situation very well.

Jaune is sitting on the edge of her bed when she jolts awake, sitting straight up. She’s sweating, the moisture sticking in her hair and rolling down her face. Her throat is sore. She must have been screaming again. Very sore. She must have been screaming for a long time. 

“Pyrrha...?” Jaune says. He reaches out, like he’s going to touch her, and then puts his hand down again. This is probably for the best. Last time he had touched her while she was half asleep she had choked him. He still has the bruises around his neck to show for it, even though they’re faded now, mostly yellow and green instead of blue and red. Guilt floods through her entire body whenever she sees them.

Pyrrha. That’s right, she is Pyrrha. 

Pyrrha. The name tastes like a lie. 

(Cinder’s warm hand on her cheek. Gentle. A caress. A mockery of love. She had leaned into that hand, longing for something that she couldn’t name. _Eris_ , Cinder said. _Destroy them._ )

“Here,” Jaune starts again. “I brought you a cup of water.” He holds it out slowly, every movement deliberate. 

Pyrrha reaches for it. Their fingers brush, but neither of them react to it. She wishes that she could reach out for him, the way she wants to. The way she had, once. She remembers always reaching out for him when she comforted him. Feeling him underneath her hands, because that had always helped her when she was upset. She had done that to all the members of JNPR, and they had all accepted her touch. 

Now she wants to touch him, but feels like she doesn’t deserve it. She wants to ask him to touch her too, but she doesn’t know how to ask for that. Especially not after she has hurt him so many times. Choked him during a nightmare, stabbing him when she was still Eris. He has a scar from that, red and jagged and ugly. If it fades at all, it won’t fade much. Pyrrha will be ashamed every time she looks at it. 

The water is cool, and it soothes her throat. Around the edges there are tiny red and black scythes. It must have been Ruby’s cup then, once upon a time. She is so grateful to Ruby and Yang and Tai for letting them stay in their cottage in Patch while she “recovers.” There aren’t many people who would have done that. 

Recovers from what, Pyrrha isn’t sure. She isn’t sure if she’ll ever heal from this anyway. If she’ll always be a liability to her team now. She had fought from Cinder’s control once, but what if she falls under her spell again? None of them know what will happen the next time Pyrrha is on the battlefield. 

That’s why she’s here, getting better. Her team had all been here, with Ruby, but Nora and Ren and Ruby had left again. Jaune had volunteered to stay with her. No one had wanted him to, Pyrrha had heard them talking about it, but he had insisted. 

“No matter what happened to her, she’s still Pyrrha,” he had said.

There had been a time when they could talk about anything. Jaune had been very easy to talk to. Her best friend. Her very first best friend. The boy she loved. The first boy that she loved. Now he was tentative around her, hesitant, constantly opening his mouth to speak and then closing it again. 

They’re the only ones in the Xiao Long/Summer cottage now, and all they do is constantly tiptoe around each other. Pyrrha wishes that she could go back to their previousness easiness, but it’s impossibly out of reach. 

( _I’m sorry,_ she said, knowing that what she was doing was cruel. That it was selfish. That she was putting her feelings before Jaune’s own. No one deserved what she had just done to him. But she knew she was going to die, and she wanted, even if it was only one time, to kiss the boy she loved before she died. And she knew she was going to die. Now that she had kissed Jaune, felt the way his hand had wrapped around her him, how soft his lips were against hers, she felt like she could die with no regrets. She loved him so much that she ached with it. Sending him away, with him screaming her name, was the hardest thing that she had ever done. She wished, for a single instance, that she could have gone with him. And then she turned away and gripped her weapons tighter, and ran towards her death.) 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jaune says suddenly, and Pyrrha almost jumps. “Your nightmare, I mean. You have a lot of them.” 

He would know. He wakes up for every single one, and comes to her room to comfort her afterwards. It helps, him being in the same room. It helps more that he’ll ever know, more than she feels like she can ever express. 

“No,” she says finally. Talking hurts her throat a little bit. She clears it, and takes another sip of water. 

Heavy silence falls between them. She can feel the way the bed shifts when Jaune tenses up. He’s about to get up and make an awkward joke and leave. He’s done it before, but Pyrrha doesn’t want him to leave with a fierceness that she’s never felt before. 

She doesn’t want him to go. 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she says again. “But can you...can you just,” she has no idea how to ask for this now. “Can you just hold me? Until I fall asleep again, at least,” she tacks on quickly, to reassure him. 

If this had been the Jaune she had known before, he would have said something. Maybe he would have made an awkward joke, or not thought anything of it because they were friends. But if she’s not the same Pyrrha that she was back then, Jaune isn’t the same boy that he was either. 

Losing her had changed something in him. She is so sorry for that. 

Without speaking, Jaune wraps his arms around her. She tenses up a little bit at the sensation. She hasn’t been touched in a comforting way for so long that she doesn’t remember what it’s like. But she forces herself to relax, and then melts into him. 

His shirt is thin enough that she can feel the warmth of his skin, the steadiness of his heartbeat. She closes her eyes to revel in the sensation of being in his arms. It’s in this moment that she realizes that she loves this boy, and not even death, or rebirth, or whatever she is now, can change that. 

Pyrrha loved Jaune. Eris hadn’t loved anyone, but she hadn’t been real. She had shattered when she had tried to destroy Jaune, because of how much Pyrrha had loved him. 

Whoever she is now, she loves Jaune too. 

Neither of them say anything, and so she eventually falls asleep again, wrapped in his arms. In the morning, she wakes up without remembering a single nightmare.

**Author's Note:**

> if you want to talk to me about how pyrrha is actually alive i'm @thecivilunrest on twitter and tomosakus on tumblr!


End file.
